Liars Without Borders
Is Russia as dangerous to journalists as some would have you believe? If you look at the way the stats are collected, then you begin to wonder...
M
ichael McFaul, a favorite punching bag for The eXile, recently launched a broadside against the Putin government in a
Foreign Affairs
article titled "The Myth of the Authoritarian Model," which was reviewed in the last issue. Among his many spurious...

Modified: 2008-02-13Anne Applebaum On Capitalism And Russian Beauty
... beautiful women...
M
y email inbox has been overflowing with letters from readers ever since my
last column
about Russia's amazing abundance of beautiful women, and how the rise of free markets made them so gorgeous. Even academic heavyweight Michael McFaul of the Hoover Institute dropped me a note thanking me for pointing out the link between Russia's turn to open free markets in the 1990s, which he helped to design and promote, and the sudden revelation of Russia's remarkable female beauty.
"Yes...

Modified: 2008-02-13The Myth of the Democratic Model
Michael McFaul is back! Stanford poli-sci prof and Commissar of Transitionology is quiet no more.
S
tanford poli-sci prof and Commissar of Transitionology, Michael McFaul, is quiet no more. After a few years of relative reticence, McFaul, once known as the...

Modified: 2008-02-11A Putin Era Retrospective
... party defeats Luzhkov's.
End of the year predictions: Y2K is a Lie2K. Another lie according to The eXile: "strict face control will become popular in Moscow clubs."
2000
JANUARY
President Putin named president of Russia. Exile nemesis Michael McFaul of the Hoover Institute
supports
Putin, as do most Pinochet-loving neo-liberals: "When [Putin] turns to economic advice, he doesn't turn to Soviet bureaucrats or KGB apparatchiks, he turns to market reformers. ... he is not caught back in...

Modified: 2007-12-21Who Killed The OSCE?
... received and a "black PR" campaign against his Communist foe, Gennady Zyuganov; Russia's print media was almost as bad. The election was not a "victory for optimists," as the Hoover Institute's notorious Yeltsin-cheerleader Michael McFaul wrote at the time. Rather, the technology of the fraudulent election, blessed by the West, served as the template for future Russian elections. But if few in the West know about this, it's because the OSCE and the Western media only began to emphasize...

Modified: 2007-11-30X YEARS WASTED
... everything about why we left America than the pious, fat-ankled, patronizing middlebrow Jean MacKenzie. She breathed life into the moribund fat-joke genre, which we exploited until she finally fled for Norway to marry a businessman who eventually dumped her.
McFaul, Mocked
6.MICHAEL MCFAUL,
Stanford professor. We outed McFaul, a major player in America's "pro-reformist/pro-democracy" game in the Yeltsin years, as the bastard who tried to have our articles banned from the Johnson's Russia List site...

Modified: 2007-06-29Get the hell outta here!
Kirill Pankratov looks at Russia's only genuine grass-roots youth movement...but it's not the kind of youth movement that would make Soros and McFaul smile...
ACTON, MA
-- So, you want a revolution?
Only recently, it seems, thoughts like these took place inside of a lot of idle minds, when a few half-stable regimes on Russia's western and southern periphery quivered and sank. Some were planning...

Modified: 2006-09-08DOOM-A
... that he "had decided to suspend the usual practice of not commenting on other countries' domestic politics and declare Zhirinovskii the personification of much that the US was sworn to oppose." And none other than former eXile nemesis Michael McFaul of the Carnegie Endowment proudly recounted to me in a nasty email exchange in 1998 that he and his wife had helped organize a protest against Zhirinovsky when he came to San Francisco in 1994. Around that time, Zhirinovsky was outed as a half-Jew...

Modified: 2005-12-15[sic]
... Selma. And during 'Nam, he was manning the bong-watch at UC Santa Cruz. If he didn't stand sentry on the bong, we might not have won 'Nam the way he says we did. Give a veteran his due credit, man!
MCFELCH
Editors,
In reviewing monographs written by McFaul and Diamond at the Hoover Institute, often my general search will bring me to your web site in which you have blasted McFaul. What gives? Is it a love hate relationship with you? It seems a bit obsessive. You are aware that there are other profs...

Modified: 2005-09-0928 Months Later
... Dead, as the crowds tear off various appendages. There'll be especially fierce competition for the mustache. Expect different insurgents to be wearing his bloodied mustache as a disguise to carry out surprise attacks in the future.
ZOMBIE #18: Michael McFaul
Quote:
"Regime change in Iraq must be the next application of the liberty doctrine. Ultimately, military force will have to be deployed to achieve this outcome....Some argue that Iraq does not support bin Laden or al Qaeda. Even if the direct...

Modified: 2005-07-01The Propaganda About Propaganda
...," was that he must have been paid by Potanin, or by the CIA, or both. It just didn't make sense any other way.
As the financial crisis was brewing in Russia, the Rumsfeld/Lesin mantra was repeated by everyone from Chubais to Clinton tool Michael McFaul, who in 1998 declared that the financial problem was a problem of image: "The perception of reality is more important than reality itself." A few months later, the economy completely collapsed and Russia initiated the largest default...

Modified: 2005-06-17The Black-Gold’n Horde
...
During the 1990s, Professor Reddaway was ostracized by his peers for daring to criticize the Yeltsin regime and warn that its insane corruption was bound to end in disaster. After the 1998 crisis, Reddaway became a kind of guru, and all of the Michael McFauls of the world quietly changed their tune.
Today, the McFauls-that is, the mainstream media, academia, and its masters in Washington-are obsessed with attacking Putin's worsening democratic credentials, naming this as the greatest threat to the...

Modified: 2005-06-03Double speak
...
"Prime Minister Primakov and his new team of Gorbachev-era ministers plan to assign a greater role to the state in managing the economy.Å Eventually, this set of policies will produce shortages, rationing coupons, and a black market."
Michael McFaul, "Why We Must Act," Hoover Digest, 1999, No. 1.
"Primakov [...] played a truly heroic role in pulling the country back from the abyss as Russia's new prime minister in the wake of its August 1998 financial meltdown."
Michael...

Modified: 2005-03-11SIC
... the Rising Sun was scared shitless of the Red Army.
With kind regards,
Mark
Paramus, New Jersey
Dear Mr. Mark,
"Zipper faces" is not the preferred nomenclature. "Slopes," please.
DEEP THOUGHTS
Just want to say your friend Michael McFaul is a scumbag.
Seroc
Dear Mr. Seroc,
One man’s scumbag is another man’s friend.
LIBYA THREAT
War Nerd,
YOU ARE FULL OF SHIT LIBYA FOR EVER
ps: if u were in libya u would be dead by now
Abdul Sawedeg
Dear Mr. Sawedeg,
That’s what Colonel Qaddafi...

Modified: 2004-12-10SIC
... fuss after you take her, you might want to strangle her, just to quiet her up, and preserve her body underneath your house. That way, you can be with her forever and ever.
MCFALLAH
Dear eXile:
You will be pleased to know that your arch enemy, Michael McFaul, has once again recreated himself. Having started out as a South Africa "expert," he quickly became a Russia "expert" as events dictated. Due to changes in the international political landscape, he is now an expert on Iran,...

Modified: 2004-11-26No-ligarchy: The Tragicomic Collapse of Russia's Former Masters
... from the authoritarian gradualism of the Chinese to the more humane approach taken by the Hungarians and Poles. In fact the whole idea of "necessary stages" itself comes from bogus Marxian-Hegelian teleology, but try telling that to a Michael McFaul or a Charles Blitzer, and the next thing you know
you're
the Communist revanchist!
The fact is that thanks largely to the oligarchs, who by their own account controlled over half of Russia's economy, Russia saw its GDP plunge by some 60% in the...

Modified: 2004-10-15Backstabbers!
..., America's Leftists have been flogging themselves to death wondering why it is that they remain so weak and disenfranchised
M
uch has been said over the past week about the final collapse of the Russian Left-opposition. Even a neo-con like Michael McFaul publicly lamented (through crocodile tears) the weekend split of the Russian Communist Party opposition, charging that "democracy as a result has suffered."
Marc Cooper's a closet Buckley fan
But the fact is that the Russian Left died...

Modified: 2004-07-0850 Reasons Why Russia Still Matters
... for their own good. But the West can't be burdened with another charity, especially when the Russians are willing to do it for free. Let the Russians oppress the khokhli and stroke their inferiority complex. It's the humane thing to do.
13. Michael McFaul
Russia is the only thing that keeps Michael McFaul's career alive. McFaul parlayed his very modest intellectual gifts into a cushy job rubber-stamping the kleptocracy in Yeltsin's era, and cleverly repositioned himself as a stern critic of creeping...

Modified: 2004-04-29What a Laugh!
... shipped to Iraq, grumbling like an asshole dad handing over the family sedan.
Sad Clown factor:
He also ordered the Apaches kept away from the front line for the rest of the war, depriving us of more great moments in comedy.
Side-Split Score:
38. Michael Mcfaul
The Joke: When Yelstin and his Young Reformers went down in ignominy in 1998, so did the fortunes of their top American academic cheerleader, Michael McFaul. That was funny, but it seemed like a one-off joke that couldn't be revived. Welp, we was...

Modified: 2003-12-25McFaul For It!McFaul can always be relied on to go the way of American power, left or right.
Blowdryin in the wind.
W
ant to know which way the winds of change are blowing? All you have to do is pop in your Scorps cassette, raise your lighter, and yes, keep...

Modified: 2003-12-12You’re Not The Same, Damnit!
... argument that Chechnya's three-year experiment with sovereignty from 1996-1999 was a disaster is a Russian-manufactured myth. The fact is Chechnya was developing along the lines dictated by the IMF and such esteemed scholars as my friend Professor Michael McFaul. Indeed, Chechnya was a model of free trade. For example, when it came to trade in the thousands of kidnapped Russians, Chechens turned to the free hand of the market to settle on pricing, supply and demand. Market rationale dictated hostages be...

Modified: 2003-09-04The Reluctant John
... had asked me if I wanted anal, which would be $70. I said I didn't. First of all I don't want to endure that fart cloud that always appears after you pull out. Secondly, I prefer wet holes to dry. And thirdly (hey, I'm starting to write like Michael McFaul here!), what's the point of doing a whore in the ass? The best way to punish a whore is to take her for a night, chew some Viagra and fuck her for hours. Even then you have to ask yourself who's really getting punished, unless she's some raving...

Modified: 2003-05-29The Gki Archipelago
... the Russian genocide of the 1990s? Because the West was complicit: the genocide took place right under the nose of, and with the guidance of, Western experts. In fact, the whole thing was the result of Russia's Westernization. Anders Aslund, Michael McFaul, Michael Spector, Fred Hiatt - you name 'em, they all praised the holocaust as the greatest thing that ever happened to Russia.
So how could a genocide possibly happen when a country Westernizes? If such a thing did take place - and the statistics...

Modified: 2003-05-03666: The Number Of The Bust
... the world believed that it benefited right along with America.
Asia was booming, a model for the Third World, just as Argentina was a model for Latin America and the IMF's poster child. Globalization was a positive word that went unchallenged. Michael McFaul was the hardest-publishing man in academia. War was declared a thing of the past. History itself had ended.
But just as history ended, the eXile began. In just six years, the eXile's tireless efforts paid off. The American economy, along with...

Modified: 2003-02-06The Dictatorship of the Pumped
... book on Yelstin's era to be published in English. If you only read one book on recent Russian history, read Violent Entrepreneurs. Cornell University Press deserves so much credit for publishing it that they can almost be forgiven for printing Michael McFaul's appalling book (reviewed last issue).
Perhaps the most surprising strength of Vadim Volkov's book is its lucid, elegant English prose. Volkov, a Russian academic, actually wrote this book in English. His English prose style, intellectually rigorous...

Modified: 2002-12-11Mikey McFaul and the Three Bears
This book is a four-hundred page testimonial to the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the American Russia-watching mafia...
Russia's Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin
By Michael McFaul, Cornell University Press, 2001
T
his book is a four-hundred page testimonial to the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the American Russia-watching mafia. In its pages, Michael McFaul condemns himself again and again with staggering non-sequiturs...

Modified: 2002-11-27Quaker Cuts Off Our Johnson
... seemed wrong. I wanted to find out.
Two issues ago, I sent Johnson my article on Limonov's trial in Saratov, Limonov's own account of his arrest last year, and a few other pieces including new press reviewer "Philby Burgess's" thrashing of McFaul and Dr. Dolan's review of a Russian collection of short stories. Again, no posting. I sent Johnson a follow-up letter asking him why he didn't post any of the articles. Surely Limonov is important enough? Johnson had posted articles from other...

Modified: 2002-11-13SIC
... List anymore-we've been officially censored, the only media outlet in America that is censored from a non-profit think tank's news list as far as we know. But that's okay. Johnson doesn't believe in the things he used to. He just believes in Michael McFaul's Carnegie Endowment check.
1979
Normal

Modified: 2002-11-13You Say Terrorist, Washington says Shuttup
... dull genocide. Like so many other genocides we ignore. It seems to have such a clear solution to civilized Westerners: Putin should simply negotiate peace with Maskhadov, shake hands, and be done with it. Yet when America bombed Serbia, the Hiatts and McFauls didn't patronizingly demand that Clinton negotiate a settlement with Milosevic; rather, Hiatt demanded that NATO keeping bombing "no matter how long it takes." Nor has he called for a political solution with Iraq. America refused to...

Modified: 2002-10-31McFallow The Leader
... authors to account. That's what I intend to do in these articles. It may not accomplish very much, but it may hurt a few of the right people, and at the moment, that seems sufficient.
I've elected to begin with a familiar eXile target, Professor Michael McFaul. It was the attacks on McFaul which first endeared this scurrilous publication to me. I've had to deal with the man, and I assure you that when the eXile chose McFaul as the perfect representative of a certain sort of innocently corrupt American...

Modified: 2002-10-17Moscow 2152: Tomorrow’s
... population's deposits, the second crisis resulted in the overnight disappearance of that coveted space underneath Russian's mattresses. The space between people's mattresses had been privatized under a program jointly developed by the World Bank and the Michael McFaul Peace Foundation, a non-profit organization named after a Stanford professor who was mauled to death by his own golden retriever, Voucher, after he had read Voucher the text to a newspaper editorial he had prepared arguing that America was doing...

Modified: 2002-09-19Your Letters
... emigrated to Australia in 1965 because I was pissed off at the US involvement in Vietnam ... lived here ever since, carrying the Beat flag in the Antipodes.
After a bit of messing around, I found your pages ... laughed myself silly at your story on McFaul. It was good ... Humour is what kills the bastards, you know.
Let me hear from you when you have a moment. Cheers!
Jack Ames, Sydney
Dear Mr. Ames,
Gosh that feels kinda weird, writing that "Dear Mr. Ames" part. It's like you and...

Modified: 2002-09-19WTO Stands For Worship The Oligarchy
... which violate neo-liberal orthodoxy by subsidizing industry, have since undercut the Kyrgyz and devastated local industry.
Worse still, its experiment with democracy, which according to the dogma preached by fundamentalist neo-liberals like Michael McFaul is supposed to walk hand-in-hand with free markets, has, since joining the WTO, been abandoned for the usual Central Asian autocracy. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists recently chose Kyrgyzstan as one of the 10 worst places for...

Modified: 2002-08-23Once Bitten, Twice Felched
... veneer of democracy to allow organizations like the OSCE and the State Department's human rights observers to save face when they issue their whitewash reports. Foreign investors know this, and they like this, in spite of the warm fuzzy hymns that the McFauls of the world sing to Great Union of Democracy and Markets. Argentina, Brazil, Turkey and others, with their constantly simmering political problems and attendent uncertainties, have disappointed the foreigners too much. Putin has proven himself...

Modified: 2002-06-28Your Letters
... lodge than you will in the grand sum of «who matters in Russia.» Oh, and the issue you did a while back, that was supposed to be so... funny? Leave it to the pros at The Onion. I hope Pavel Bure scores a hat trick on your ass. Tell Taibbi to keep kicking McFaul's ass.
Love.
John Harrell
Dear Mr. Harrell,
Do people actually admit that they like the Onion? Welp, if you think that's kewl, why stop with the pros at the Onion? Surely an anti-intulekchewall comedy daredevil like yourself also "leaves...

Modified: 2002-06-26I, Michael McFaul, Writes Good
Let me just say right off the bat that I am in the middle of an ongoing conflict with Stanford professor and Carnegie Fellow Michael McFaul, a conflict that involves lawyers on both sides and the very real possibility of future legal actions...
When a declarative or an imperative sentence is enclosed in quotation marks, the period ending the sentence is, in what may be called the...

Modified: 2002-03-21E-Mail Your Letters to [SIC]:
... Don't believe us? Just ask El Hajerino himself! He'll tell ya! Just as soon as they take that orange ball out of his mouth and lift the top of his halogen-flooded cage to throw him a peanut butter 'n jelly sandwich, he'll tell ya!
MCFAUL-ING DOWN
Maybe McFaul is not so bad, but just patriotic dog who loves whoever is #1 man. It's not the first time I've seen a man get erection watching Donald Rumsfeld. He speaks to something deep long denied in men. That's not the worst, can't we "english"...

Modified: 2002-02-20Who Tolerates a Dissident?
... labels, even though there is no substantive proof to support these accusations. (Similarly, even the eXile has been attacked as a fascist, pro-Nazi, and anti-Semitic newspaper by its many detractors ranging from goyim like former Clinton tool Michael McFaul and commentator Peter Ekman to leading members of the Western press corps. In spite of the fact that our staff is nearly 40% Jewish, this accusation has stuck in many influential circles.)
These smear tactics have gotten so irrational and out...

Modified: 2002-02-20Der Neue Mcfaul
... pinstripes and privatization.
Today, the same shameless turn is taking place before our eyes, even in the good ol' U S of A. Don't believe me? Strap on your helmet, cock your gun and read this quote from a recent Op-Ed by former neo-liberal tool Michael McFaul: "The process of defeating the enemies of liberty is twofold: Crush their regimes or the regimes that harbor them and then build new democratic, pro-Western regimes in the vacuum."
Zoiks! That's scary stuff, kids! It's the Count Floyd...

Modified: 2002-02-06Results of the 1st 5-Year Plan
... advisable.
The fundamental task of the five-year plan was to transfer energies previously squandered on small and scattered targets to vicious attacks on ever larger and more-deserving victims, so as to eliminate the possibility of people like Michael McFaul getting off scot-free when they perpetrate their heinous shit on the world at large.
Finally, the fundamental task of the five-year plan was to create all the necessary technical and economic prerequisites for increasing to the utmost the reach...

Modified: 2002-02-06A Terror Odyssey 2001: THE EXILE LIST OF TERROR SUSPECTS
... some-how make us feel good about destroying Russia
Role in the International Terrorist Conspiracy:
Three years ago, when Russia defaulted on her debt, devalued the ruble and abandoned horrific IMF advice on how to reform its economy, everyone from Michael McFaul and The Washington Post to, yep, the IMF declared that Russia was heading for the abyss. Now that it's economy has grown three years in a row, those same people are declaring that thanks to capitalism and reforms, Russia is now growing, and all...

Modified: 2001-12-26COMBED OVER!!!
... phone. Jake explained that he wanted to inform them of a copyright infringement involving Netwatcher, etc. etc. She listened politely for a few minutes, then asked Jake for his name and telephone number:
"My name?" Jake said. "Michael McFaul. I work for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. My number in Washington is 202-932-2322..."
For some reason, either McFaul's name or his employer did not sound plausible to Linda, and finally she revealed a glimpse of the eXile-created...

Save The eXile: The War Nerd Calls Mayday EditorialThe future of The eXile is in your hands! We're holding a fundraiser to save the paper, and your soul. Tune in to Gary Brecher's urgent request for reinforcements and donate as much as you can. If you don't, we'll be overrun and wiped off the face of the earth, forever.

Scanning Moscow’s Traffic CopsAutomotive SectionWe’re happy to introduce a new column in which we publish Moscow’s raw radio communications, courtesy of a Russian amateur radio enthusiast. This issue, eXile readers are given a peek into the secret conversations of Moscow’s traffic police, the notorious "GAIshniki."

Eleven Years of Threats: The eXile's Incredible JourneyFeature Story By The eXileGood Night, and Bad Luck: In a nation terrorized by its own government, one newspaper dared to fart in its face. Get out your hankies, cuz we’re taking a look back at the impossible crises we overcame.

Your Letters[SIC!]Russia's freedom-loving free market martyr Mikhail Khodorkovsky answers some of this week's letters, and he's got nothing but praise for President Medvedev.

Clubbing Adventures Through TimeClub Review By Dmitriy BabooshkaeXile club reviewer Babooshka takes a trip through time with the ghost of Moscow clubbing past, present and future, and true to form, gets laid in the process.

The Fortnight SpinBardak Calendar By Jared LindquistJared comes out with yet another roundup of upcoming bardak sessions.

Your Letters[SIC!]Richard Gere tackles this week's letters. Now reformed, he fights for gerbil rights all around the world.

13 Toxic Talents: Hollywood’s Worst PollutersAmerica By Eileen JonesEverybody complains about celebrities, but nobody does anything about them. People, it’s time to stop fretting about whether we’re a celebrity-obsessed culture—we are, we have been, we’re going to be—and instead take practical steps to clean up the celebrity-obsessed culture we’ve got...